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Saturday, August 29, 2015

GULF OF ADEN ARMS RACE. SUPERPOWERS' AFRICAN CHESS GAME

NATIONS WHO ARE NOT AT ALL FRIENDLY WITH ONE ANOTHER HAVE SENT NAVAL VESSELS TO THE GULF OF ADEN OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, ALLEGEDLY TO DEAL WITH THOSE SOMALIAN PIRATES, BUT THINGS BEGAN HEATING UP WHEN IRAN AND CHINA ARRIVED ON THE SCENE.

THAT SO MANY NATIONS ARE THERE AT ONE TIME IS, IN ITSELF, MOST INTERESTING, IS, IN FACT, A NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN-IN-HISTORY GATHERING, BUT RECENT RELEASES OF WIKILEAKS CABLES MAY POINT TO SOMETHING FAR MORE SINISTER GOING ON THERE.NO UFOs MENTIONED IN ANY WIKILEAKS, SORRY, UFOLOGISTS.MAYBE NEXT SET OF LEAKS?

THERE IS AN ANOMALY, BUT IT'S GEOMAGNETIC.

MANY REASONS HAVE BEEN GIVEN FOR EACH NATION'S NAVY BEING THERE, AND THAT SO MANY REASONS HAVE BEEN OFFERED IS ALSO JUST A LITTLE ODD.THEY SHOULD PICK ONE AND STICK TO THAT STORY.I ALSO DISCOVERED SOME LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT WHY SOME SOMALIS TURNED TO PIRACY, AND I LEARNED THAT THEY DID NOT BEGIN AS PIRATES, BUT AS FISHERMEN WHO GOT SICK OF OTHER NATIONS DUMPING NUCLEAR WASTE OFF THEIR COAST AND RAIDING THEIR WATERS ILLEGALLY FOR FISH AND SHRIMP.

THE U.N. HAS ADDRESSED BOTH THESE ISSUES AND FOUND THEM FACTUAL.ILLEGAL DUMPING AND ILLEGAL FISHING HAVE BOTH GONE ON THERE FOR AT LEAST 25-30 YEARS!

THAT ARTICLE TELLS US A 'NEW' REASON FOR AMERICA'S PRESENCE IN THAT DISTANT GULF:

"The United States moved military assets in the region in a bid to stop Iran from moving weapons into Yemen."NO! CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR!AMERICA HAS BEEN THERE MILITARILY, CONTINUOUSLY FOR ABOUT 20 YEARS!IT ESTABLISHED A SPRAWLING MILITARY BASE IN DJIBOUTI LONG AGO!ALMOST ALL THE WORLD'S "SUPERPOWERS" HAVE MILITARY BASES THERE AND CHINA WILL SOON BE ADDED TO THE LIST.

BUT WHY SUCH A GATHERING IN SO SMALL A NATION AS DJIBOUTI?

IT ISN'T EXTRATERRESTRIALS THAT SOMALIS AND ALL OF AFRICA NEED TO WORRY ABOUT!

IT MAY BE BECAUSE SO MANY NATIONS, INCLUDING THE U.S., HAVE BEEN CAUGHT SUPPLYING WEAPONS THERE.

THE BIG, RICH, NATURAL RESOURCES-NEEDY NATIONS HAVE BEEN TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AFRICAN NATIONS FOR CENTURIES NOW.

IT'S ALSO A GREAT PLACE TO HAVE DRONE BASES, QUITE HANDY WHEN OTHER NATIONS WON'T ALLOW IT.WE KNOW WHO LOVES THEIR DRONES, DON'T WE?

IT MAY BE BETTER TO LOOK AT THE GULF OF ADEN AS A POSSIBLE SITE FOR ONE OF THOSE "INTERNATIONAL INCIDENTS", THE KINDS THAT START REAL WARS.

ONE DAY, SOMEONE IS GOING TO BE CAUGHT WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN (ARMING SOME NATION AGAINST ANOTHER) AND THINGS WILL GO FROM BAD TO WORSE QUICKLY.

WITH CHINA SHOVING IN, SENDING MORE SHIPS IN JUST TO PROVE THEY CAN, AND IRAN THERE ALONGSIDE THE SAUDI NAVY AND THE UAE, IT'S A TINDER BOX.

"U.S. and coalition personnel are trained to avoid contributing to opportunities for miscalculation, and did not respond to the threatening behavior, avoiding escalation of the situation, which concluded with the Iranian frigate departing the scene," Stephens said.

The Farragut has been operating in the Persian Gulf throughout the summer as part of a regular deployment with the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, which left Norfolk, Virginia, in March."IRAN IS STILL WALKING TALL AFTER ITS BIG DEAL FOR NUKES.

IRANIAN VESSELS WARNED-OFF PART OF THE FRENCH PRESENCE THERE IN MAY AS WELL.

"After the commanding officer of the Alborz destroyer signaled a warning to them to stay away, the “intruders apologized and changed their course,”, the Iranian Navy said in a statement.

Iran’s Navy has managed to foil several attacks on both Iranian and foreign tankers during its missions in international waters, escorting about 3,000 Iranian merchantmen and providing military assistance to dozens of foreign ships."

BAHRAIN DID HAVE A PRESENCE, AS DID THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATE AND EVEN KUWAIT WAS IN AND OUT, PROBABLY PASSING OUT A LITTLE CASH HERE AND THERE.

Prior to the new cover story of why America has so many ships in the area, Combined Task Force 150, a multinational coalition task force, SUPPOSEDLY took on the role of fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia by establishing a "Maritime Security Patrol Area" (MSPA) within the Gulf of Aden.

CTF 150 FORMED IN 2008...REMEMBER THAT...2008.

Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150), we are told, is a multinational coalition naval task force working under the 25 nation coalition of Combined Maritime Forces and is based in Bahrain, established to monitor, inspect, board, and stop suspect shipping to pursue the "Global War on Terrorism" in the Horn of Africa region (HOA) and includes operations in the North Arabian Sea to support operations in the Indian Ocean.

These 'activities' are referred to as Maritime Security Operations (MSO).

WE COULD ALSO REFER TO IT AS "WEAPONS, WEAPONS, WHO'S RUNNING GUNS TODAY?".

Countries presently contributing to CTF-150 include Pakistan Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Other nations who have participated include Australia, Italy, India, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Thailand and Turkey.

The command of the task force rotates among the different participating navies, with commands usually lasting between four and six months.

"On 27 August 2015 command of Combined Task Force 151 (CTF 151), WHICH WAS FORMED IN 2009, passed from the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force under the command of Rear Admiral Hiroshi Ito to Captain Ayhan Bay of the Turkish Navy, who will be promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral on 30 August."NEW "TASK FORCE"ADD BRUNEI, VIETNAM AND SINGAPORE TO THE LIST OF SUPPLIERS, I MEAN, PIRATE WATCHERS.

It is a multinational task force that conducts counter-piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

It was decided that CTF-150 could not conduct counter-piracy operations effectively in the region with their maritime security mandate. Consequently CTF 151 was established in January 2009 with a specific piracy mission-based mandate under the authority of UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS 1816, 1838, 1846, 1851 and 1897.I MUST WONDER WHAT RESOLUTIONS HAVE ALLOWED UN 'BLUE HELMETS' TO RAPE AFRICAN WOMEN, SODOMIZE CHILDREN AND MUTILATE AFRICANS FOR OVER 40 YEARS NOW.THEY'VE DONE A BANG-UP JOB IN ALL THOSE CATEGORIES.SEE A 'SHORT LIST' OF UN PEACEKEEPERS' CRIMES IN MANY NATIONS <HERE>.MAYBE THE BLUE HELMETS' IMMUNITY TO LOCAL LAWS MAKES THEM TOO "AGGRESSIVE"?

Multinational representation in CTF 151 grew from seven to 11 nations with France, Brunei, Vietnam and Thailand joining a command team that already includes representatives from Australia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States."ANOTHER THING THEY FAIL TO MENTION IN ANY GLOWING REPORT ABOUT THE CTF GANG AND THE PIRATES, IS THAT PIRACY INCIDENTS WENT WAY UP 2 YEARS RUNNING THERE, THE TWO YEARS IN WHICH CTF 150 AND CTF 151 WERE FORMED, EVEN WITH ALL THOSE VESSELS SAILING ABOUT IN THE GULF.

SO, WE'VE ESTABLISHED A LARGE, HISTORICAL PRESENCE OF MANY NATIONS' NAVAL FLEETS IN THE GULF OF ADEN FOR A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF TIME AND, AT BEST, THAT PRESENCE HAS MERELY MOVED THE LOCATIONS OF THE PIRATES A BIT.

IS IT REALLY ABOUT THOSE SOMALI PIRATES?WELL, THERE ARE CERTAIN FACTS ABOUT THE PIRATES MOST DON'T KNOW.THEY NEVER STARTED OUT TO BE PIRATES.THAT JUST EVOLVED.

SOMALIA IS ONE OF THE POOREST NATIONS ON EARTH.IT HAS ALSO BEEN HARD HIT BY DROUGHT AND BY OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS.PEOPLE THERE DEPEND HEAVILY ON THE SEA FOR FOOD AND TRADE.THEY DON'T HAVE A NAVY TO DEFEND THEIR COAST LIKE SOME OTHERS DO.

FROM HUFFINGTON POST, WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:05/25/2011 You Are Being Lied to About Pirates"As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by huge trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100 km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone AGREES they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?POSTSCRIPT: Some commenters seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching to 3300 km. Imagine how easy it would be - without any coastguard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places - but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction."PIRATES OR NATIONAL HEROES, THAT "INTERNATIONAL COALITION" HAS MISSED A LOT OF HIJACKINGS, SO WHAT GOOD ARE THEY, REALLY?

FROM 'SHIPPING TIMES', JAN. 18, 2010

"A total of 406 incidents of piracy and armed robbery have been reported in the 2009 annual piracy report issued by the ICC International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre (IMB PRC).

The last time piracy figures crossed 400 incidents was in 2003.2009 is also the third successive year that the number of reported incidents have increased with 239, 263 and 293 incidents reported in 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively.The report states that worldwide in 2009, 153 vessels were boarded, 49 vessels were hijacked, 84 attempted attacks and 120 vessels fired upon – compared to 46 ships fired upon in 2008. A total of 1052 crew were taken hostage. Sixty eight crew were injured in the various incidents and eight crew killed. The level of violence towards the crew has increased along with the number of crew injuries.The total number of incidents attributed to the Somali pirates stands at 217 with 47 vessels hijacked and 867 crew members taken hostage. Somalia accounts for more than half of the 2009 figures, with the attacks continuing to remain opportunistic in nature."ALL THOSE NAVIES, ALL THOSE SHIPS AND PIRACY WAS UP... WAY UP.IF THEY ARE NOT STOPPING PIRACY THERE, WHAT ARE THEY DOING?WIKILEAKS RELEASED SECRET CABLES, JUNE 12, 2010, OFFERED CLUES

"The diplomatic dispatch from February 2009 is one of the most controversial classified documents to be leaked on the Internet by WikiLeaks.As such, it adds to a political storm engulfing WikiLeaks and its 39-year-old founder Julian Assange. WikiLeaks has become the subject of a criminal investigation in the United States aimed at determining how it obtained more than 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables that it has been releasing, and whether it violated any laws in doing so.The cable includes oil and natural-gas pipelines, communication hubs, shipping terminals, pharmaceutical and chemical plants, and mines.Critics say publication of what is essentially a list of targets for terrorists raises fresh questions about whether WikiLeaks has committed the criminal offense of supporting terrorism. The list details undersea cables, oil and natural-gas pipelines, key communications hubs, shipping ports, mineral resources, drug suppliers, and firms considered to be of strategic importance. The sites are in countries ranging from Canada and Britain to the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and China.Meanwhile, the shipping lane that links the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean is seen by the U.S. State Department as being vital to U.S. national security because it is part of a "critical supply chain." That has prompted the inclusion on the list of Yemen's Straight of Bab el-Mandeb -- a six-kilometer-wide sea lane connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden between the horn of Africa and the Middle East.Oil tankers coming out of the Persian Gulf must pass through Strait of Bab el-Mandab to reach the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. Nonclassified analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that the closure of Bab el-Mandeb also would block non-oil shipments from using the Suez Canal except for limited trade within the Red Sea region."IT SEEMS WIKILEAKS HAS ANOTHER HALF MILLION CABLES, ETC, IT IS PLANNING TO RELEASE REGARDING THE GULF OF ADEN, WHAT THE SUPERPOWERS ARE REALLY DOING THERE, AND EVEN MORE REVELATIONS ON MILITARY BASES THAN BEFORE.

THERE IS SPECULATION THAT JULIAN ASSANGE WAS ARRESTED AND HAS HAD TO HIDE OUT AT THE ECUADORAN EMBASSY SINCE THEN JUST BECAUSE OF THE DOCUMENTS HE HAS YET TO RELEASE.

YOU CAN BET THE BIG NATIONS ARE HOLDING THEIR BREATH AND DREADING THAT DAY!ARMS...ARMS/WEAPONS SALES AND MAKING SURE THOSE WE FAVOR HAVE BETTER WEAPONS THAN THOSE WE DON'T LIKE...THAT IS WHY THE U.S. IS THERE...TO KEEP AHEAD IN THE GAME, TO PROTECT WHAT IT HAS ESTABLISHED IN THAT REGION, TO ADD TO WHAT IT HAS, AND TO OUTMANEUVER ALL THE OTHERS WHO ALSO SEE AFRICA AS FAIR GAME.

WINNER TAKE ALL?WE'LL SEE.

THE U.S. AND ALL OTHER SUPERPOWERS ARE PLAYING AFRICA LIKE A CHESS GAME!IT'S BEEN ONGOING SINCE CLINTON WAS IN OFFICE, AND, HONESTLY, SINCE WE KNEW AFRICA WAS ON THE MAP!

February 10, 2000 African Nations Need Aid, Not Arms

"Even as the United States was convening a special meeting of the United Nation's Security Council last month on the issue of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was failing to accept its responsibility for helping to create the conditions that have led to this and other seemingly intractable conflicts.

The Clinton administration has made considerable effort to put a new and improved face on its relations with African countries. High-level visits to the region -- first by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, then by President Clinton himself in the spring of 1998 and finally by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke last December -- have reinforced the idea of a new partnership with the continent, based on promoting "African solutions to African problems."

The reality, however, is that the problems facing Africa and her people -- with eleven armed conflicts under way, political instability, and the lowest regional rate of economic growth worldwide -- have been fueled in part by a legacy of U.S. involvement in the region.

Throughout the Cold War era, from 1950 to 1989, the United States delivered over $1.5 billion worth of weaponry to Africa. Many of the top U.S. arms clients --Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC) -- have turned out to be the top basket cases of the 1990s in terms of violence, instability, and economic collapse.

And more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration is still relying on the failed policy of arming and training African military forces at the expense of making long-term investments in sustainable development and conflict prevention in the region.

Instead of pious statements and high-level visits, the administration needs to reverse its current policies and begin restricting the flow of weapons and military training to nations on the troubled continent.

Although Congress recently passed legislation requiring the President to begin negotiations toward establishing an international arms-sales code of conduct, based on human rights, non-aggression, and democracy, the United States continues to exempt its own exports from these same standards.

It will take more than a series of meetings at the United Nations to begin to undo the damage wrought by decades of misguided U.S. weapons transfers to African dictators and demagogues."

"We need a simple and transparent set of rules to govern all our military education programs. The first rule should be that the United States does not give any kind of military assistance whatever to governments that murder their own people." -- Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, July 1998.

Although the long-term effects of JCET, ACRI, and ACSS remain to be seen, prioritizing U.S. military training over sustainable development programs offers little hope for addressing the roots of conflict and preventing future violence in Africa.

As Demilitarization for Democracy (DfD) has noted, the military’s hold on political and economic power continues to undermine democratic transition in many African nations today. "

SEE THAT DATE?1998!

WEAPONS, ARMS, FEED THE CONFLICTS, STARVE THE PEOPLE!

FACE IT, NOBODY CARES ABOUT AFRICA'S PEOPLE, JUST THEIR RESOURCES, THEIR GLOBAL POSITION WHICH AFFORDS THIS OR THAT NATION ACCESS TO THE VOLATILE MIDDLE EAST.

Since 2008, at the request of the UN, NATO has been supporting international efforts to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden, off the Horn of Africa and in the Indian Ocean.

NATO is currently leading Operation Ocean Shield, which helps to deter and disrupt pirate attacks while protecting vessels and helping to increase the general level of security in the region.

NATO works in close cooperation with other actors in the region including the European Union’s Operation Atalanta, the US Combined Task Force 151 and individual country contributors.

CHINA:AUGUST, 2012

"China’s arms exports have surged over the past decade, flooding sub-Saharan Africa with a new source of cheap assault rifles and ammunition and exposing Beijing to international scrutiny as its lethal wares wind up in conflict zones in violation of U.N. sanctions.

[UN SANCTIONS, UN SANCTIONS...WHAT REAL GOOD HAVE UN SANCTIONS EVER DONE?DOES CHINA, THE U.S., RUSSIA, IRAN REALLY CRINGE AT UN SANCTIONS?AREN'T THOSE 'SANCTIONS' JUST A LITTLE SLAP ON THE WRIST?]

Weapons from China have surfaced in a string of U.N. investigations in war zones stretching from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Ivory Coast, Somalia and Sudan.

[SURPRISE, SURPRISE!SO HAVE SOVIET AND AMERICAN AND BRITISH WEAPONS!]

China is by no means alone in supplying the arms that help fuel African conflicts, and there is no proof that China or its arms exporters have intentionally violated U.N. embargoes in any of those countries.

But China has stood apart from other major arms exporters, including Russia, for its assertive challenge to U.N. authority, routinely refusing to cooperate with U.N. arms experts and flexing its diplomatic muscle to protect its allies and curtail investigations that may shed light on its own secretive arms industry."

I CALL PURE BS ON THAT "STANDS ALONE"!RUSSIA, FRANCE, AMERICA, IRAN, THE UK, ALL HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO WEAPONS SUPPLIES "ILLEGALLY" THERE! ALL HAVE 'SUPPLIED RMS ILLEGALLY!

AND THE AFRICAN PEOPLE?WHO GIVES A DAMN, RIGHT?MILITARY SUPREMACY OVER ALL!

EVERYBODY TRYING FOR THAT "CHECKMATE!".

____________________________FURTHER READING:THERE IS ALSO A CTF 158.

Combined Task Force Iraqi Maritime or CTF IM (previously known as Combined Task Force 158) is an international naval task group, established as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It consists of naval assets from the United States Navy and Coast Guard, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Navy, working alongside elements of the Iraqi Navy and the Iraqi Marines. It reports to the Coalition Maritime Component Commander in Bahrain.

CTF IM's mission is to protect Iraqi waters and oil infrastructure and to provide international maritime security in the Northern Persian Gulf. It is also tasked to help develop the new Iraqi Navy.

YOU CAN BET THE OLD FARM THAT WEAPONS RUNNING IS A PRIORITY FOR THAT GROUP AS WELL!

CAN WE POSSIBLY COUNT THE PLACES OR THE TIMES THAT AMERICA HAS BEEN CAUGHT "GUN-RUNNING"?

---NOW, ABOUT THAT MAGNETIC ANOMALY THERE...SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS UNIQUE.

FROM THE JOURNAL 'NATURE':08 July 1982The main features of magnetic anomalies over ocean ridges have been explained1 as a corollary of seafloor spreading and geomagnetic reversals. Oceanic crust is formed in a narrow region, becoming magnetized in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field as its temperature falls through the Curie point of the magnetic minerals present. The Gulf of Aden was one of the first places where reversely magnetized sea floor was recognized2. The seafloor spreading direction and latitude are such that the anomaly due to normal magnetization is negative and slightly skewed. Positive anomalies were also observed suggesting the presence of reverse magnetization. A short wavelength magnetic anomaly which frequently occurs superimposed on the axial magnetic anomaly in the Gulf of Aden is now described. Various interpretations are considered; the preferred involves a dramatic shallowing of the Curie temperature isotherm close to the seafloor spreading centre. The interpretation has implications for models of the generation of oceanic lithosphere and for locating possible geothermal areas in rifted regions.

THE UNUSUAL EARTHQUAKE ACTIVITY, 2010"More than 30 strong earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.5 to 5.4 have rattled under the sea where the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea meet at a point off of Yemen.

The depths have been mostly around 10km, with a few deeper. A closer look reveals that, so far 20 of the earthquakes have been at a depth of exactly 10.0 km.

The first earthquakeregistering 6.3 shook the Gulf of Aden on Saturday, January 2, 2010.THINGS ESCALATED IN NOVEMBER: NOV. 2010

06:29, 14-Nov-2010 as a magnitude 4.6.

Just 3 minutes later, a magnitude 5.4. Subsequent earthquakes have been shaking the ocean floor, some only minutes apart, and some just seconds apart. Update, 15-Nov, 1500 UTC, three additional earthquakes rumbled near magnitude 5 within 30 minutes of each other, bringing the current total count up to 42. Location map and depth chart have been updated."

THIS ESTABLISHES THE VERACITY OF THE UNUSUAL SWARM OF QUAKES THERE in 2010.NOT THAT UNUSUAL FOR SUCH A SEISMICALLY ACTIVE AREA.

The earthquake swarm location is at a tectonic plate boundary region where the Arabia plate meets the Somalia plate and the Nubian plate. A string of volcanoes is also located in that vicinity.

In 2005, in an area just 400 km from the current Aden Ridge earthquakes, a 35 mile stretch of land suddenly ripped open in Ethiopia as two sections of the African continent pulled apart.

Not long after, a University of Rochester study, published in an issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggested that boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed.

"Geologists Show that Seafloor Dynamics Are at Work in Splitting African Continent"

In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia.

At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea." Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study:"We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," says Ebinger.

She explains that since the areas where the seafloor is spreading are almost always situated under miles of ocean, it's nearly impossible to monitor more than a small section of the ridge at once so there's no way for geologists to know how much of the ridge may break open and spread at any one time.

"Seafloor ridges are made up of sections, each of which can be hundreds of miles long. Because of this study, we now know that each one of those segments can tear open in a just a few days."

"Magnetic and gravity data gathered during the Encens-Sheba cruise (2000 June) in the eastern Gulf of Aden provide insights on the structural evolution of segmentation from rifted margins to incipient seafloor spreading. In this study, we document the conjugate margins asymmetry, confirm the location of the ocean–continent transition (OCT) previously proposed by seismic data, and describe its deep structure and segmentation. In the OCT, gravity models indicate highly thinned crust while magnetic data indicate presence of non-oceanic high-amplitude magnetic anomalies where syn-rift sediments are not observed. Thus, the OCT could be made of ultra-stretched continental crust intruded by magmatic bodies. However, locally in the north, the nature of the OCT could be either an area of ultra-slow spreading oceanic crust or exhumed serpentinized mantle. Between the Alula-Fartak and Socotra fracture zones, the non-volcanic margins and the OCT are segmented by two N027°E-trending transfer fault zones. These transfer zones define three N110°E-trending segments that evolve through time. The first evidence of oceanic spreading corresponds to the magnetic anomaly A5d and is thus dated back to 17.6 Ma at least. Reconstruction of the spreading process suggests a complex non-uniform opening by an arc-like initiation of seafloor spreading in the OCT. The early segmentation appears to be directly related to the continental margin segmentation. The spreading axis segmentation evolved from three segments (17.6 to 10.95 Ma) to two segments (10.95 Ma to present). At the onset of the spreading process, the western segment propagated eastwards, thus reducing the size of the central segment. The presence of a propagator could explain the observed spreading asymmetry with the northern flank of the Sheba ridge being wider than the southern one.LOOKS LIKE AFRICA IS BEING TORN APART BY JUST ABOUT EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.